The Print Summit organized by the Bombay Master Printers Association and held at the ITC Grand Maratha in Mumbai on April 5, 2008 had a huge turnout. Printers from all over the country attended it though the majority were Mumbai based. Manoj Mehta, former President of the All India Federation of Master Printers, and Fred Poonawala of Comart gave the inaugural and welcome addresses. Manoj Mehta especially thanked Xerox, Converflex and Grafitalia along with other sponsors for their support. The date for the next Print Summit, 24 February 2009, was also announced.

In his keynote address Andrew Horne, Managing Director Xerox India, shared his thoughts on how human evolution would be poor without printing. He extolled the power of the printed word. “A medical book or a telephone directory can save a life, a good menu card can be the beginning of a great meal, airport and road signs guide our way everyday and sometimes even our destiny,” he said.

Digital printing
The presentation by Pankaj Kalra of Xerox India, on the future of digital printing in the country was a very interactive session where printers asked a number of relevant questions. In fact Vipin Tuteja, Director of the Production Systems Group of Xerox India and Andrew Horne both decided to answer a few questions themselves during the Q&A session and commented that they were extremely happy with the interest of the printers in the discussion. They felt that the questions were actually asked with a purpose.

The most important point that came out of the presentation and the discussion was that digital would never replace offset printing but would complement it. When asked whether Xerox faced any challenges or threats while getting into the digital printing market, Kalra said that they didn’t faced any threat, but the two challenges that they continue to face were in terms of the sheet size and speed that digital printing can deliver.

Publishing and print growth
Hoshang Billimoria, CEO, NextGen Publishing, spoke on the future of the printing business in India. He said that according to a study, newspaper printing across the world was down, but in India newspaper printing was increasing. The growth in the magazine sector was the highest in India at 13.3 percent with China next at 11.6 per cent, and the US the lowest at 2.6 per cent. He believes special interest publications are the future of the magazine industry.

Currently there are about 600 English magazines in the country and web offset is the solution for printing magazines. His view was that books have very small print runs in India. Billimoria explained that publishers are not always loyal, they will move to any country where they get the best exchange rate, which can be a disadvantage. Thus, the Rupee exchange rate plays a very important role in book publishing. He concluded by saying that the future of print is bright in India and the printers offering more services will be the successful ones.

Breakthroughs
The two panel sessions conducted and moderated by Pranav Parikh, CMD Technova Imaging systems were also very interesting. In the first session on breakthrough principles and tools, each panelist spoke about the breakthroughs in their businesses. Parikh brought out that a breakthrough did not always mean upgradation of technology in a company -- it could also mean a change in the processes of a company, a new rule or anything else.

Ramesh Kejriwal of Parksons Packaging, said his first breakthrourgh was in 1987 when he decided to get into commercial printing and installed his first Heidelberg 4-colour. In 2000 Parksons began their own digital workflow and decided to get into packaging seriously and set up a new plant in Daman. In 2005, they started UV printing after doing thorough research and instigated by customer demand. In 2007 they scaled up their technology and set up the plant in Chakan with state of the art technology. In 2008 they have gone live with SAP.

Also announced during the summit was the best printer of the year who was Khushru Patel of Jack Printers and a new event to be organized by the BMPA “Print India 2008”. Manoj Mehta believes it will be a mini Drupa and said the event has already received a huge response. It will be held from the 14 to 18 November 2008 in Mumbai, and will cover an area of 3000 square meters approximately. Hari Om Printers of Mumbai won the bumper prize of the Rs. 80,000 tour to drupa08 in May end.